Driver Experience for Safer Roads

When I was twelve, my family and I were driving through Amarillo to Colorado. We were towing a camping trailer down the highway, and a distracted driver pulled in front of us and ended up flipping our rig. Thanks to seatbelts, no one was badly injured, although our home and transportation for the next week had just been destroyed. We didn’t know what we were going to do – but this isn’t about that story. The driver who pulled in front of us learned a valuable lesson that day, and I doubt they forget to check before merging anymore.

Studies would suggest that driver experience is the key to lowering the number of deaths related to driving, not traditional education. Organizations such as the National Safety Council, Foundation for Traffic Safety, and the CDC all have research stating that young drivers die the most. This might not make sense, given that young drivers are the most recently educated, so they should be the best drivers. Instead, it seems to be experienced drivers who are safer.

Croatia is a country that requires over 80 hours of driving experience before you can obtain a license. The United States’ requirements vary from state to state, but I had to only have 4 hours of experience. Croatia’s 80 hours are expensive and may seem extreme, but in the past, the country has had a much lower death rate due to driving. The States has a population of about 330 million people, while Croatia has a population of about 4 million. That means Croatia has about 0.012% the population of the States, so if their drivers were as safe as ours, their driving deaths would be the same percentage. The States suffered just over 46 thousand deaths from driving in 2022, while Croatia suffered 275 deaths. Croatia thus had 0.006% of the deaths as the States – half of what it should be. There are a few factors to note before fully digesting this number, albeit: Croatia is a different country than the States – different people, roads, and laws – so it may naturally be safer to drive in. However, this big of a discrepancy cannot all be attributed to a change in location.

I am not saying that by making student drivers take 80 hours of lessons before they can hold a license would be plausible, but it supports the idea that more experience drastically decreases death rates. There is a system already in place, however, that could perform this function. In most states, a person can get a learner’s permit before they can get a full license. This allows them to drive under supervision of an adult so that they can build experience and learn the niche rules and methods of driving that you aren’t taught in driver’s ed. The Federal Aviation Administration has a similar, though more restrictive, system for student pilots: A certified instructor spends time in the airplane and teaches the student how to fly. After each flight, the student logs their hours in a book, which is an official record of their experience. The student driver system could expand and adopt a similar system, in which their experience is officially logged. They would still drive with their parents, so the experience would not be incredibly expensive, but it would allow the government to put a minimum limit on how many hours a person needs in order to obtain a license. This kind of system would only work for teenagers, but given that they are the most likely age group to get in wrecks, I suspect that it would markedly lessen the deaths of all drivers.

However, there is another problem between drivers and safety. Modern phones have proliferated to the point where they are a part of standard society. A teenager without a phone is a strange sight. Unfortunately, driving and texting can be very bad for a person’s health. It is true that newer cars have anti-collision systems and lane assistance to prevent fender benders and slow speed hits, but those aren’t going to help someone going 60 miles an hour down the highway. I have realized that if I want to keep driving, I have to leave my phone in my pocket when I go out. This is something that should be ingrained into every driver. However, there is truly little that can be done about the problem. You can tell a driver to not text and drive, but we already have, and that only goes so far. Drivers who text and drive need to learn for themselves that it is a bad idea. Once again, the solution to this problem is experience and real life lessons.

This all goes to show that a veteran driver is safer than a green one. Experience should be gained in safer environments to prevent unnecessary crashes from happening.